Good morning, Colleagues-

During yesterday’s call, a few folks mentioned that ICANN’s Bylaws contain commitments to uphold “Competition” and “Consumer Choice/Consumer Trust”.   These references to the Bylaws were offered in support of the proposed Use Case that RDS data should be a primary resource for consumers who are seeking to verify the operator of a website, or check the reputation of business, or to dispute a commercial transaction.

For clarity, it’s worth noting that the predominant context for “competition” in ICANN’s Bylaws is specific to the domain name industry, esp. Registries and Registrars.  And this makes sense, given that the industry prior to ICANN had no concept of “competition” or “consumer choice”; all domain transactions were handled by a single provider.

Additionally, mentions of “consumer protection”, “consumer choice”, and “consumer trust” within the Bylaws are contained within Section 4.6(d), which outlines the “Periodic Reviews”, and are an element of the 2012 New gTLD program.  These sections were ported to the Bylaws from the Affirmation of Commitments, and were drafted when many feared that new gTLDs would confuse consumers and undermine trust/confidence in the DNS.

Taken together, it’s not correct to conclude that WHOIS/RDS data is intended to replace or preempt more widely recognized alternative tools for online consumers, like:

• SSL certificates, verified by Certificate Authorities (CA) and supported by all modern browsers
• Trust certificates (issued by organizations like the Better Business Bureau, Trustwave, McAffee, SiteLock, and card processors like Visa/Mastercard)
• Reputation/review services like Google ratings, Yelp, and Facebook or Amazon reviews, and
• The “About Us” or “Contact Us” or “Customer Support” links on merchant websites, which are omnipresent for legitimate businesses and required by law in many areas.

But if this is still a point of divergence among the EPDP members, then perhaps we could consult ICANN Legal about the extent of their “Competition” and “Consumer Trust” mandate, and whether they believe ICANN is on the hook for the integrity & consumer satisfaction for all commercial activity taking place anywhere on the Internet.

J.

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James Bladel

GoDaddy